Deleting the
Body, Art and Virtual Bodies in the Digital Age: The Use of New Media
in Education: Opportunities and Challenges of Cooperative Teaching
and Learning

1. Introduction

Abb. 1: Jean Marc Cote:
View of a Classroom in 2000 from 1899.

Jean Marc Cote's vision of a classroom in the
year 2000 is an example of the rich technical fantasy of the time in
which it was created, 1899
[1].
The picture of a classroom connected to a network, complete with
modern transmitters carried by the students on their heads, seems to
capture our digital age a hundred years in advance. But here the
students are white and male, and they are sitting in disciplined
rows, all faced towards the front, behind their narrow school desks.
Cote's imaginary world is still centred on books; the teacher is
feeding books into a modern data base, which, however, is still
driven mechanically.

Abb. 2:
AR-picture

In the Natural Sciences, particularly
medicine and the biological sciences, or in industry training
seminars (especially the motor industry) advanced interactive 3D
technology is used to make displays of subject matter more vivid. The
principle of 'augmented reality' (AR) enables the visual
simplification of complex processes. A special pair of data
spectacles allows the real world and computer images to be overlaid
on top of each other
[2].

2. Media Aspects of teaching material in
Art History

The everyday Work in the History of Art today
lies somewhere between these two extremes. The extent of the use of
computer-generated multi-media applications, such as digital
pictures, numeric simulations and so forth in arthistories practices
is very varied, and depends greatly on the individual's involvement
with modern technology. In Germany, digitalisation and digital
indexing of academic collections and those in museums have been going
on for some years in various Institutions. Examples of this work can
be found in the Marburger Index or the CENSUS (Census of Antique
Works of Art and Architecture known in the Renaissance) at the
Humboldt University, now available via Internet. But these image
databases, these 'digital slide shows' remain mostly on the shelf.
They are not widely used either for traditional teaching in seminars
and lectures, nor on those special occasions when the subject is
multi-media or Art History Resources on the World Wide Web. New
possibilities for visualisation and structuring offered by the
computer present a challenge for the History of Art. The two slide
projectors we have used since Hermann Grimm and Heinrich
Wölfflin have run their course: On the one hand because of the
new technologies that have become part of everyday life, and on the
other because, in the process of increasing inter-disciplinary work,
Art History has opened its doors to genres such as Film, Photography
and Media Art, as well as political theories about Cyberspace,
interactive Art, the art of virtual reality and current Transgenic
Art.

This change in the media used for instruction
is probably more important for the History of Art than for other
disciplines, because the concern of writing in the History of Art is
not the object recognised as an artwork but its reproduction in
various media. [3]
The media used influence the art-historian's perception, analysis,
and interpretation to a considerable degree. Ever since the wider
acceptance of pictorial projection and photography for historical
work over a hundred years ago, the motionless picture - on paper in
research, on the screen in teaching - has been the visual medium to
the exclusion of all others. At the same time, with hindsight, it is
astonishing that the recognition of photography as an objective
illustrative medium took over six decades, and was not possible Art
History until the natural sciences had admitted its
usefulness.

Abb. 4: L.J. Marcys
Sciopticon from 1872.

Abb. 5:
Laterna Magica, a 1755 encyclopedia page showing three box type
camera obscuras with prism or lens arrangements at the top to
direct the image down to the drawing surface.

At the Art Historians' Congress of Vienna in
1873, Bruno Mayer invited his colleagues to admire the process of
pictorial projection using a light source. He presented a machine
called a Skioptikon that projected images recorded on glass
onto the wall. This process had been unveiled and exhibited at the
first World Exhibition in 1851 in London, and had been known for some
time as the Laterna Magica. But it took until about 1900, and
a person of the stature of Hermann Grimm, to persuade Academia to
recognise the Skioptikon. Grimm compared the Skioptikon to the
natural scientist's microscope, and thought of it as a test-bed for
the quality of a work of art.

When we view the challenges of today's
digitalisation, two things are of major importance. The first is the
tendency to visualise, that is, to make images from information, and
the second is the nature of the digital revolution. It is above all a
Revolution in Communication. Digitalisation's influence will be
correspondingly large, not only on visualisation and exchange of
information, but also on the ways in which lecturers and students
interact with each other.

3. The Use of New Media in Education:
Opportunities and Challenges of Co-operative Teaching and
Learning

This development affects and challenges both
colleges and universities. In the future they will certainly follow
Wilhelm von Humboldt's dictum of scholarship as the unity of
research, instruction and education, but they will also have to face
the challenges which accompany the coming digitalisation of the
world. The use of new media in learning and education not only alters
the substantive and structural demands made upon educational
institutions but also offers new possibilities for the processing of
knowledge, for its presentation and for the pedagogical exchange in
the lecture hall.

3.1 Disembodied communicative
practices

Today networked computers offer a medium,
which enables communication between spatially separated points and
permits simultaneous reaction at both of them. Isolated individuals
are pushed into virtual proximity, facilitating the revival of
communicative practices familiar to oral cultures. A particular
vision is connected to this: just as artificial intelligence tries to
realise spirit independent of the body, telematic communication
establishes a reciprocal communication independent of physical
location. While the model for a dialogue on the level of
tele-presence can be found in oral conversation, these two forms of
communication differ in that actual physical presence has become
unnecessary. The written word had already introduced a form of
communication between interlocutors in different places. But this was
only possible with the loss of direct interaction between self and
other. And this is what interactivity has been able to achieve:
Individuals who are not physically present can react to one another
while communicating. This is considered a particular feature of
online communication. The distinction between oral and telematic
communication can be described as the distinction between physically
bound and physically unbound forms of communication. De-personalised
communication in the internet nullifies the 'performative dimension'
of speech described by John L. Austin in the phrase "speech as
action." [4]

4. Interactive
Distance-Learning

The two projects interactive Homepage
and PROMETHEUS of the Humboldt University's Art History Department,
implement a broad, long-term integration of new media as a means of
teaching, learning, and communication
[5].
The notion of network-based 'distance learning' will be developed
through re-organisation of the information provided by the Art
History Seminar in the World Wide Web. The goal is to provide
productive support for actual classroom learning through 'pools of
knowledge,' which will be co-operatively managed and which can be
tailored to the personal needs and interests of the course
participants.

Two elements are of central importance, both
of them concerned with teaching and research:

The development of database-supported
client-server systems, which support the processing and networking of
digital information, makes possible the distribution of knowledge at
a reasonable price and with efficient use of available personnel.
These systems, which are accessible via the Internet over great
distances, provide optimal preconditions for self-directed multimedia
study.

The assembling of isolated sources of
knowledge and their organisation according to unified standards and
interfaces based on agreed standards in internet technology provides
the discipline of art history with new opportunities. These include
generation of new cognitive connections as well as practical
possibilities for professional use on the basis of a "best practice
strategy". Such "knowledge management" requires a centrally directed
general authority, which can regulate the overall organisation of
information in the emerging pool of knowledge, on the technological
and on the administrative level. Furthermore, it means that students
and instructors have the opportunity to use this personalised and
newly contextualised knowledge and the obligation to update
it.

The construction of a database-supported Web
site within the structure of the institute's 'homepage' is a
content-management solution which provides all members of the
institute with the possibility of updating their information in a
simple and de-centralised manner. The system provides authorised
members access to pre-structured data relating to the institute's
information services. The elements include schedule changes, lists of
events, current institute announcements and other categories of
information. These can be updated easily and quickly, at short
notice. The content is generated from an SQL-database server. They
can be searched and indexed, and they are 'interactive', if we
understand interactivity to be the one-sided capacity to alter data
sets over the Internet. Individual projects within the institute,
which are based upon similar concepts, can also be integrated using
this technology. Examples are the structured archives of historical
images, texts and videos, as well as work collections or literature
databanks. It is of decisive importance for the implementation of a
knowledge-system extending beyond individual institutions that
uniform indexing standards be developed according to international,
national and individual criteria. These can then be applied
consistently to objects or records. The open meta-data standards
advocated after the W3-consortium's pioneer work, which guarantee the
greatest possible openness and flexibility in individual adaptation
on the basis of SGML/XML, have priority.

5. Online Seminars and Distance
Learning

The existing content-management system will
include distance-learning functions. It will enable students to
organise a personalised study plan which can be automatically
adjusted to university course requirements. The organisation and
practical realisation of courses via computer has become possible -
either exclusively through the new media or as a supplement to
'traditional' courses. Instruction and learning materials, which have
traditionally been presented in person or on paper, can now be
distributed in electronic form to registered seminar participants as
'downloads' or in an online version. The participants receiving such
materials can respond by making their own work materials or research
contributions available as 'uploads' to the seminar's temporary
online-community. In this way, self-organised distance learning with
an increasing pool of knowledge comes about which requires no
additional expenditure of finances or staff. And it can be accessed
anywhere, at any time. At the end of the seminar the accumulated
knowledge can, if desired, be made accessible to the art-history
public; in any event, it can be stored permanently in an electronic
archive. Additional interactive services such as online discussion
forums will accompany the courses, as will personalised newsletters
and mailing lists. The need for visual representation in courses as
well as the option to use multimedia will be provided through the
integration of speaking user-interface metaphors, images, sound, and
streamed videos. The user or seminar participant will be offered
highly intuitive access to the various materials through a virtual
'desktop', a 'personal workspace' in the web browser, a virtual
'slide projector', and library 'reference works' online.

6. The future of the History of Art
(Image Science)

New techniques for the visualisation of
cognitively conditioned contexts become possible. It is no longer
only the natural scientist, for example, the biologist, who
'presents' DNA - invisible to the human eye - through computer
simulation. Scholars of art history, too, will demonstrate
connections on the basis of applied computer graphics produced from
organised databank queries. For example let us take the concept that
enables databank information - itself abstract, but treated in
conventionally as textual information - to become visible:
three-dimensional environments in VRML or 'ThinkMap' navigational
surfaces are the future tools of the 'image scholar'
(BildwissenschaftlerIn), who makes some of the objects in her
emerging discipline into methodological instruments.

[5]
I am grateful to have the opportunity to realise this project with
the co-operation of my two colleagues Dorothee Wiethoff and Thomas
Lackner, both graduates in Art History but now working in positions
in IT.

Abstract

Aims:

Colleges and universities are simultaneously
affected and challenged by this transformation. Universities of the
future will surely continue in Wilhelm von Humboldt's tradition of
scholarship as the unity of research, instruction and education, but
they will also have to face the challenges which accompany the
digitalization of the world in the 21st
century. The use of new media in learning and education not only
alters the substantive and structural demands made upon educational
institutions. Such media also offer new possibilities for the
processing of knowledge, for its presentation as well as for its
pedagogical mediation in the lecture hall or seminar room.

Summary Description:

The project interactive
Homepage of the Humboldt
University's Art History Seminar which I will demonstrate, is
promoting and implementing a broad, long-term integration of new
media both as a means of teaching, learning and communication and the
use of three
databases situated at the seminar in
class, like the CENSUS (Census of Antique Works of Art and
Architecture Known in the Renaissance), IMAGO (digitale
Diathek") and the Database for Art and Virtual Reality.

Central Arguments:

A notion of network-based 'distance learning'
will be developed through the new organization of information
provided by the Art History Seminar in the World Wide Web. The goal
here is to provide productive support for actual classroom learning
through 'pools of knowledge,' which will cooperatively managed and
which can be tailored to the personal needs and interests of the
course participants.Two elements are of central importance here, both
of which are equally concerned with teaching and research:

The development of database-supported
client-server systems, which support the processing and networking
of digital information, makes possible the distribution of
knowledge at a reasonable price and with the efficient use of an
institute's personnel. These systems, which are accessible via the
Internet at great distances and independent of space and time,
provide the optimal presuppositions for multimedia self-directed
study.

Bringing together isolated sources of
knowledge and organizing them properly according to unified
standards and interfaces based on internet technologies provides
the discipline of art history with new und yet unrealized
opportunities. These include the generation of new cognitive
connections as well practical possibilities for professional use
on the basis of a "best practice strategy". Such "knowledge
management" conceptions require, on the one hand, a centrally
directed general authority which can regulate, on the
technological-administrative level, the overall organization of
information in the emerging pool of knowledge.